The NCAA and the Rule of Reason

This brief essay considers the use of antitrust’s rule of reason in assessing challenges to rule-making by the NCAA. In particular, it looks at the O’Bannon case, which involved challenges to NCAA rules that limit the compensation of student athletes under the NCAA rubric that protects the “amateur” status of collegiate athletes. Within that rubric, the Ninth Circuit got the right answer. That outcome leads to a broader question, however: Should the NCAA’s long held goal, frequently supported by the courts, of preserving athletic amateurism be jettisoned? Given the dual role that colleges play, that is a complex question, which raises issues that are not only commercial but also educational. More important for the purpose at hand, is whether jettisoning amateurism in NCAA athletics is a suitable task for an antitrust tribunal. This paper argues that antitrust law is not an appropriate vehicle for addressing that issue. This does not mean that antitrust has no role to play in policing athlete compensation in NCAA schools. But it does suggest that that role be limited to addressing restraints on trade that occur within the rubric of amateur status—at least until such time as a more competent body decides whether amateurism in collegiate athletics is worth preserving.     

The National Collegiate Athletic Association Cartel: Why it Exists,How it Works,and What it Does

In this essay we consider why American colleges and universities participate in big-time commercialized intercollegiate sports, and how sports came to play such a prominent role on American college and university campuses. We also review how the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) developed as a body to regulate player safety and transformed itself into an economic regulator, the means by which the NCAA attempts to maintain its control, increase revenues, and reduce costs for college sports programs. We also examine how the organization succeeds in the face of institutional characteristics that imply that its cartel activities would be doomed. Finally, we speculate on what changes might be on the horizon for the NCAA and college athletics.     

The NCAA Cartel and Antitrust Policy

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was originally founded to protect student athletes from the brutality of college football. The NCAA has established a number of prominent athletic programs and achieved huge commercial success. In spite of this success, the NCAA has limited the compensation of student-athletes through collusive monopsonistic restraints. Ordinarily, these restraints would be vulnerable to antitrust attack, but the NCAA has enjoyed benign neglect by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The root of this is the Board of Regents [National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, 468 U.S. 85 (1984)] decision, which requires rule-of-reason treatment of the NCAA’s restraints. The essential role of amateurism of student athletes is used to justify the NCAA’s cartel behavior. In this paper, we demonstrate that amateurism is a myth. We suggest that the NCAA will be unable to provide an evidentiary foundation for its claim that amateurism is crucial to the success of college athletic programs. In addition, we reject the possibility of an efficiency defense for the NCAA’s cartel behavior.     

Strategic Interaction in a Repeated Game: Evidence from NCAA Football Recruiting

We analyze decisions to comply or cheat on NCAA recruiting regulations in the context of repeated interactions. Teams possess private information about resources devoted to football programs, recruiting effort made by rival programs, and rival program behavior. We test for evidence that the behavior of NCAA Division IA football programs conforms to predictions from repeated game theoretic models using panel data from IA football over the period 1978–2005. We find anecdotal and empirical support for strategic interaction. The presence of in-conference rivals under NCAA sanctions increases the probability of a team being placed under future sanctions.     

Other voices,other rooms: differentiating social identity development in organisational and Pro‐Am virtual teams

This paper advocates a social identity approach as a way to overcome the normative limitations of existing virtual team identity research. We also explore how social identity understandings of virtual team identity could benefit from incorporating comparisons between organisational and professional amateur virtual teams; and a focus on technologically mediated dialogues.     

上市公司董事会专业委员会的设立及其在中国的现状分析

董事会作为公司治理的核心,一直是国内外学者研究的热点。由于董事会本身的内生性缺陷,因此在董事会下设立相应的专业委员会作为常设机构来弥补董事会的自身不足成为公司治理的重要构架。在中国股份制改革下．许多上市公司的董事会依然欠缺独立性,而且专业能力不足。文章在介绍董事会专业委员会基本理论及有关国家经验的基础上,分析了董事会专业委员会在我国的发展现状．并提出了完善我国董事会专业委员会制度的建议。强调为强化上市公司董事会功能,设置专业委员会是必要之措施。     

Undergraduate design learning in multiple partnerships: joinedupdesign for academies

This article reports research into undergraduate design learning through an off-campus partnership. The Sorrell Foundation’s Joinedupdesign for Academies programme involved partnerships between university design departments, ‘failing’ 11–18 schools and professional designers, in the context of a funding commitment to rebuild/renew school buildings in the UK, and an ideological commitment to remodel schools as ‘Academies’. We investigated the impact on 12 undergraduate Design students’ learning as they partnered pupils at two secondary schools in a live regeneration project, following both schools’ redesign/relaunch as ‘Academies’. Using a mixed methods case study approach, we report the acquisition of a wide range of employability skills, vital for professional designers, through an innovative learning model in which pupils act as clients. In terms of design education, these partnerships provided a rare and authentic exposure to the complex demands of publicly-funded work for undergraduate design students, and as such offer a new and potentially interesting model for experiential design education, which bridges campus and off-campus learning.     

Modeling Competitive Imbalance and Self-Regulation in College Sports

The principal-agent relationship between athletic directors and their university administration suggests a conference equilibrium of revenue-maximizing athletic directors. With smaller- and larger-revenue departments, revenue maximization predicts conference competitive imbalance. The larger the revenue dispersion, the greater the imbalance. Pooled revenue sharing increases the absolute level of talent and reduces competitive imbalance. That national championships are determined across conferences may explain the widespread adoption of nearly complete revenue sharing. The model also explains the form of the amateur requirement and predicts that competitive imbalance is invariant with respect to that amateur specification. This has obvious implications for balance-based arguments for or against increasing compensation to athletes.     

Revenue — carrying the international can

Division of revenue, or ‘separation’ studies, have developed in volume and sophistication the USA to the stage where the subject now offers a specialized professional career for growing numbers of lawyers, accountants and engineers. This has been necessary to cope with traffic relationships between the many US operating companies (and is also an international carrier). This has been compounded by complexities stemming from recent liberal government policies which permit increased competition and the entry of new common carriers.     

Transferring and Transforming Technology Education: A Study of Norwegian Teachers’ Perceptions of Ideas from Design & Technology

What happens when educational ideas cross national and cultural borders? How do teachers respond to ideas originating in a different school system and a different national culture? This article reports on an empirical study investigating the transfer of ideas from Design &; Technology as a subject in England and Wales into Norwegian schools. A sample of teachers participating in a specific project on technology teaching inspired by this subject has been studied by means of interviews and classroom observation. Results of the study show that while some elements of Design &; Technology are adopted by the teachers, essential ideas of the subject are significantly transformed. Drawing on Barnes, (1992, Teachers and Teaching: From Classrooms to Reflection (pp. 9–32), The Falmer press, London) concept of teachers' professional frames for teaching, it is shown how specific aspects of the national and educational culture have had a considerable effect on?the teachers' interpretation of the nature of technology as a subject of teaching and its place in the curriculum. The study illustrates the importance of the cultural context in how educational ideas are interpreted, reshaped and realized in schools.     

The NCAA Cartel and Competitive Balance in College Football

The NCAA regulates college football player recruiting, eligibility, and compensation. The economic theory of cartels suggests that one consequence may be reduced competitive balance. The enforced restrictions inhibit weak teams from improving, and protect strong teams from competition. A stratification is implied which should be evident over time as less churning in national rankings and conference standings, and fewer schools achieving national prominence. I test this general hypothesis by comparing various competitive balance measures for about 25 years before and after NCAA enforcement began in 1952. The hypothesis is supported by all measures at both the national and conference levels.     

浅谈我国石油石化产业组织改革

改革开放以来,我国石油石化产业组织按照市场化渐进式改革道路,产权体制从行政集中管理体制向国有石油公司、股份制石油公司转变,从产业链的上下游分割向上下游一体化的石油公司转变。通过改革,促进了产业综合实力的提升,建立了市场化条件下的竞争机制。我国的石油石化产业仍需继续深化改革,创新体制和机制,进一步建立健全现代企业制度,做强做大石油石化企业,建设具有国际竞争力的跨国企业。同时,应注重改革与稳定发展的关系,兼顾公平与效率。     

Problem based learning: application to technology education in three countries

An increasing variety of professional educational and training disciplines are now problem based (eg, medicine, nursing, engineering, community health), and they may have a corresponding variety of educational objectives. However, they all have in common the use of problems in the instructional sequence. The problems may be as diverse as a mechanical predicament, an unexplained phenomena, or patient symptoms. Technology education in secondary schools is undergoing a period of significant change in many countries. It is therefore imperative that technology teacher education adopt not only the technologies that have been identified as being important, but also incorporate appropriate methodologies for the instruction of these technologies. PBL offers a number of relevant features to technology education and it is because of these that the project outlined in this paper has been developed.     

Machine Control – A Design and Technology Discipline in Israel's Senior High Schools

This paper presents a concept of the Machine Control discipline developed through the past decade as part of the technological education reform in Israel. The discipline has been widely implemented in senior high schools as an optional matriculation subject. Principles, contents, experience, evaluation and challenges of the curriculum are discussed. Specific features of the discipline in rural, technological and general school environments are presented and illustrated by examples. Arguments in support of a cross-national comparison of specific technology programs are given. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

关于市场营销专业建设的探索与思考

在高等教育快速发展的今天,市场营销专业也面临一些新的问题和挑战,需要我们与时俱进,进行专业改革,也对我们提出了更高的要求。本文以长江大学为例,对如何做好新形势下市场营销专业建设进行了探究,提出了一些如何办好市场营销专业的建议和主张。     

Two elementary schools’ developing potential for sustainability of engineering education

The Next Generation Science Standards present a way for engineering lessons to be formally integrated into elementary classrooms at a national level in the United States. Professional development programs are an important method for preparing teachers to enact the new engineering practices in their science classrooms. To better understand what contextual factors help a professional development program have a sustained effect on the implementation of engineering, we closely examined two elementary schools within the same school district that participated in the same professional development program but had very different outcomes in their lasting implementation of engineering. Using the case study method, we corroborate quantitative and qualitative sources of data measuring students’ learning and attitudes; teachers’ learning, attitudes, and implementation fidelity; perceived teacher community; and administrative support. Our analysis revealed that although the professional development program had district-level administrative support, there was considerable variation between schools in how teachers’ perceived school level support. In addition, teachers at the sustaining school collaborated and co-taught with one another. Our findings support previous literature on the role of administrative support and teacher learning communities. We discuss practical ways that professional development programs can seek to foster a context which is supportive of sustaining curriculum change for engineering.     

高职商务英语专业“课证融通”课程体系的构建

基于高职院校"双证书"的获取和职业岗位能力的要求,以"课证融通"为思路,从模块化的专业课堂体系、资格证书考试内容融入专业课程教学、多元化的过程性考核方式,改革商务英语专业的课程体系,实现高职教育的人才培养目标。     

＂印后加工技术＂课程教学改革探讨

＂印后加工技术＂是印刷工程本科专业的一门重要的专业核心课程.本论文根据印刷工程本科专业的教学特点,在＂印后加工技术＂课程教学中,从培养印刷工程专业学生的实践技能和素质教育,深化教学改革,构建合理的课程体系与完善的教学内容入手,利用各种教学方法和手段,提高学生的培养质量;加强实践环节,在培养学生实际技能等方面提出了一些教学改革的设想和措施.     

Teachers learning about technology and technology education: Insights from a professional development experience

The introduction of technology education in primary and secondary schools during the past 10–15 years around the world has presented a number of difficulties for teachers, primarily related to their coming to understand the phenomenon of technology and to conceptualise the technology learning area in line with national frameworks. This paper reports on a professional development experience that aimed to assist a small group of primary school teachers to develop their understandings of technology and technology education. A theoretical model framed a series of professional development interactions between the researchers and the experienced teachers who were new to teaching technology. Data sources included teacher interviews, video recordings of the activities, teacher made models, and extracts from their reflective journals. The study presented some insights into how professional development experiences for teachers new to technology could be organised and implemented to best support their developing technology practices and understandings.